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Creation Date
2017-06-05
Description
Dyckerhoff and Widmann AG (Dywidag) was a German construction company active since the late-19th Century. This map was made in GEO 242: Community GIS, as a collaboration between Dr. Paul Jaskot of the Dept. of History of Art and Architecture and Geography major, Alex Temes. The map shows the distribution of Dywidag construction sites between 1918 and 1923 and identifies large regional clusters of new construction in areas that became central to Germany’s modern economy. Moreover, the map indicates an unexpected degree of suburbanization, particularly in industrial contexts, which were confirmed through the GIS technique of Average Nearest Neighbor Analysis. Dr. Jaskot explains, "What is interesting and surprising here from an historical point of view is not only the spread of building activity but the number of sites and different kinds of building. Generally, 1918-1923 are crisis years in Germany that did not resolve until the Dawes Plan of 1924. In art history we talk about this period as a time of planning with only a few finished buildings, but looking at it from the point of view of construction gives us, literally, a very different picture."
Keywords
germany, building, commercial, GIS, architecture